Workshop of the World

The work of the pioneering historian Raphael Samuel helped opened up new vistas of historical enquiry, bringing about the democratisation of the historical discipline, as well as its practice via the influential History Workshop movement of which he was a founder.

Yet much of his own historical research remains inaccessible to the general reader, hidden in academic journals and obscure volumes. Now, for the first time, Workshop of the World brings the full range and depth of Samuel's historical writing on nineteenth-century Britain to the fore. From his pioneering study of the influence of the Catholic Church on England's Irish population to his expansive and erudite essay on the itinerant labourers of Victorian Britain, The Workshop of the World shows both the breadth and depth of his learning. Guided by both a political engagement as well as a methodological commitment to uncovering the stories of ordinary people, The Workshop of the World will help introduce Raphael Samuel's work to a new generation of readers.